Vaping Digest September 11th
Wednesday’s News at a glance:
Trump Announces Disastrous Plan to Ban Flavored Vapes Across the US – Separating Fact From Fiction on Vaping, E-Cigarettes and Lung Illnesses – Don’t be alarmed by America’s latest vaping scare – FULL INTERVIEW | Obscuring Truth: Did CDC and FDA Fail the Public in Lung Scare? – Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids are Lying to the Public – Pieces of the Mysterious Lung Disease Puzzle Starting to Come Together, But CDC Continues to Endanger Health by Hiding the Critical Pieces – Vitamin E Acetate Products Investigated in THC Oil Deaths – Trump to meet on e-cigarettes as White House considers crackdown – To Prevent Teen Vaping, Give Kids The Facts, Not Misinformation – The Mystery Lung Disease Caused by “Vaping” Was a Textbook Drug Panic – Don’t Ban E-Cigarettes – Dispersing the clouds of the vape panic myth – COMMENT: The killer was tainted cannabis, not nicotine. Stopping vaping could be deadly. – Comprehensive survey of radionuclides in contemporary smokeless tobacco products – 160 Million Reasons To Lie – Vaping Helps Smokers Quit – Mousey Research Scoffed At – Asia Harm Reduction Forum – Legislators make laws, not governors
BREAKING NEWS:
Trump Announces Disastrous Plan to Ban Flavored Vapes Across the US
Will Godfrey, Filter
President Donald Trump announced on September 11 that he wants the Food and Drug Administration to plan to pull flavored vaping products from the US market. Describing vaping as “a new problem in the country,” he told reporters after a policy meeting that “very, very strong action” may be needed to protect “innocent children.”
Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar confirmed that the FDA is finalizing plans to ban all flavors except tobacco across the country. The process of implementing a national ban would be expected to take several months.
Separating Fact From Fiction on Vaping, E-Cigarettes and Lung Illnesses
Guy Bentley, Reason Foundation
The exact cause of this recent outbreak has yet to be determined but a clear pattern has emerged in terms of what these patients have been vaping and the common factor appears to be cannabis oils and other contaminants, not legal e-cigarette products.
Don’t be alarmed by America’s latest vaping scare
Daniel Pryor, Adam Smith Institute
America is currently in the midst of moral panic. A cluster of people have developed severe and sudden lung injuries after vaping and at least 5 deaths have now been linked to e-cigarette use. It’s important to state from the outset that this should not worry UK vapers or indeed the overwhelming majority of people around the world who use e-cigarettes as a reduced-risk smoking cessation aid.
FULL INTERVIEW | Obscuring Truth: Did CDC and FDA Fail the Public in Lung Scare?
Brent Stafford, Regulator Watch
It’s a real tragedy and certainly a public health emergency. But these are not the only victims; tens of millions of people who rely on traditional nicotine-vaping products as a lifeline to quit smoking (or to stay quit) now find access to these products threatened, or in the case of the state of Michigan, revoked, restricted, denied.
Two from Dr Siegel, The Rest of the Story:
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids are Lying to the Public
Whether one supports or opposes a ban on flavored e-cigarettes, I would hope we would all agree that it is unethical to lie to the public in order to support one’s position. But that is exactly what Mayor Bloomberg and the Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids have done in an op-ed they published today in the New York Times.
Pieces of the Mysterious Lung Disease Puzzle Starting to Come Together
But CDC Continues to Endanger Health by Hiding the Critical Pieces
The pieces of the puzzle of what is causing the “mysterious” outbreak of acute, severe lung disease among more than 450 people–mostly youth and young adults–are starting to come together. Yesterday, new cases of this illness were reported in at least three states. They were said to be associated with “vaping.” However, if you read the fine print, it turns out that all of these cases were associated with the use of black market THC vaping cartridges.
Vitamin E Acetate Products Investigated in THC Oil Deaths
Jim McDonald, Vaping 360
There was big news on the lung injury outbreak yesterday, and it came—again—from the cannabis press. Leafly reported that multiple companies have been making and selling cutting agents for hash oil used in vape cartridges that contain the substance known as vitamin E acetate. The dangerous product may be in more than half of all the carts sold in the U.S.
Related: Regulators, Industry React to Vitamin E-Tainted Vape Carts
Trump to meet on e-cigarettes as White House considers crackdown
, Fox Business
President Trump will have a meeting on Wednesday about e-cigarettes in light of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s report that at least six people may have died from vaping-related illnesses, sources told Fox News’ John Roberts.
U.S. health officials are urging people to avoid e-cigarettes while the CDC investigates 450 cases of lung illness and six deaths that may be linked to chemical exposure while vaping.
To Prevent Teen Vaping, Give Kids The Facts, Not Misinformation
Michael Siegel, The Federalist
One of the oft-repeated “facts” disseminated by anti-tobacco organizations in an attempt to curb youth vaping is that using one Juul pod is the same as smoking one pack of cigarettes. For example, Collegiate Times tells students, “Engineered to be much more convenient than a cigarette, JUULs are arguably more addictive as one pod is the equivalent of 20 cigarettes (or a typical pack of smokes).”
Where did this myth, which has spread like wildfire, come from?
I just announced with @POTUS and @FDACommissioner that we will be finalizing policies that will clear flavored e-cigarettes from the market. New provisional data show that youth use continues to rise rapidly, and we will not stand idly by.
— Secretary Alex Azar (@SecAzar) September 11, 2019
Trump just told at least 10 million adult vapers that he’s not interested in their vote in 2020. And good luck to them when they return to smoking and die. Is there a single Democrat who isn’t stupid and recognizes the huge opportunity to win these people over?
— Paul Blair (@gopaulblair) September 11, 2019
So most of these vaping illnesses are coming from black-market THC products, but the solution is to make *legal* vaping products *less* available? Driving more people to said market?
How has such an obviously illogical narrative become the prevalent one?
— Kat Timpf (@KatTimpf) September 10, 2019
The Mystery Lung Disease Caused by “Vaping” Was a Textbook Drug Panic
Helen Redmond, Filter
The opportunity that tobacco harm reduction haters have been waiting for finally arrived. On September 4, Governor Gretchen Whitmer (D) used emergency powers to issue an executive order banning sales of flavored vapes in Michigan—the first state to take such a step. “Companies selling vaping products are using candy flavors to hook children on nicotine and misleading claims to promote the belief that these products are safe,” declared Whitmer. “That ends today.”
Don’t Ban E-Cigarettes
, Slate
At the height of the United States’ experiment with Prohibition in the 1920s, the federal government took an extreme step to combat Americans’ continuing consumption of alcohol. Recognizing that bootleggers were redistilling industrial alcohol to make it potable, the government poisoned the supply to render it irreversibly toxic. People kept drinking. Thousands died, and many more were sickened. Today we look back on this episode in horror, confident that we would never endorse such a cruel approach to prohibition.
Dispersing the clouds of the vape panic myth
Christopher Snowdon, Spectator US
The Great American Vaping Panic is reaching its ghastly conclusion. As I write this, five people have died in hospital and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating 450 reports of people going into seizures after vaping. Politicians are demanding a renewed clampdown on an e-cigarette industry that was being blamed for a youth ‘tobacco epidemic’ long before these events unfurled. The market leader, Juul, is under investigation by the FDA, its products are banned in the company’s hometown of San Francisco and it may not be long before they are banned nationwide.
COMMENT: The killer was tainted cannabis, not nicotine.
Stopping vaping could be deadly.
Dr Colin Mendelsohn, The Feed
Let’s set the record straight on the alarming headlines out of the US these past two weeks.
Nearly all the deaths and lung illnesses reportedly ‘linked to vaping’ involved people vaping contaminated black-market cannabis (THC) oil purchased from street vendors. No cases have been linked to nicotine vaping.
Vaping nicotine is the most popular aid for quitting smoking in western countries and is a far safer alternative to smoking.
Editor note: Don’t miss this!
Comprehensive survey of radionuclides in contemporary smokeless tobacco products
BMC Chemistry
There is considerable interest in the chemical composition of smokeless tobacco products (STPs), owing to health concerns associated with their use. Previous studies have documented levels of 210Po, 210Pb and uranium in STP samples. Here, the levels of 13 α-particle and 15 β-radiation emitting radionuclides have been measured in a broad and representative range of contemporary STPs commercially available in the United States and Sweden.
Five from Dave Cross, Planet Of The Vapes
160 Million Reasons To Lie
The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids claims to be “a leading force in the fight to reduce tobacco use and its deadly consequences in the United States and around the world.” With tobacco use in terminal decline, these days the organisation spends its time attacking vaping instead. Now, thanks to a $160 million injection from Bloomberg Philanthropies, it has more reason to lie about tobacco harm reduction than ever.
Vaping Helps Smokers Quit
Associate Professor Natalie Walker and Professor Chris Bullen at the National Institute of Health Innovation, University of Auckland, New Zealand have published research that could help up to 50,000 more Kiwi lives be saved. The study, published in top medical journal The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, states that vaping helps smokers quit.
Mousey Research Scoffed At
Stanton Glantz is funded to produce anti-vape pieces of work and fills his remaining time by promoting other people’s flawed studies. He describes a recent mouse study as a “well-done experiment” and is promoting it as offering up an answer to the recent spate of THC-related lung incidents. Experts point out the study is unsound and “irresponsible”.
Asia Harm Reduction Forum
The Korea Harm Reduction Association (KHRA) and Yayasan Pemerhati Kesehatan Publik Indonesia (YPKP) hosted the 3rd Asia Harm Reduction Forum at GLAD Hotel Yeouido, Seoul. 150 experts from 18 countries including USA, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Greece and many Asian countries gathered to discuss tobacco harm reduction.
Legislators make laws, not governors
The American Vaping Association has slammed Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her announcement, last week, to announce an emergency declaration and ban vape flavours. The organisation has stated that it plans on challenging such action through the courts if necessary.
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